Antisocial behaviour from a local kid

Jiggers77

My wife was weeding our garden this afternoon and went to empty the bins in the back garden. She returns to find two kids from another neighbourhood messing around with the mower and making a mess on the drive with all the hedge cuttings. Tells them to get lost as anyone would, one of the little gits turns to her and says "f!!k you, you f!!!ing wh!!re. This kid would be no more than 10 years old and has been getting away with this sort of crap for too long! Parents don't care and Gardai not interested! What do you do?

Put this up on another forum and people thought it a good opportunity to have a laugh!

Pixie Chief

That sort of thing is really difficult to deal with. Your wife has my sympathies. Unfortunately, there are kids that are just let run riot and they have no respect whatsoever and the parents seem to be just fine with that. As a general rule, I ignore these things unless they are causing a repeated problem - as a one off I would probably let it go because dealing with it gets messy. However, should you decide to go this route there is really only one attitude to adopt: Right thing easy, wrong thing hard.

Right now, doing the wrong thing for this kid is easy because there are no consequences to his actions that he cares about so you will have to find something that he does care about (or the parents, after all this is their job!). It does take a certain amount of attitude but you can get it done. My son was having a problem with this other boy in school who kept telling him that his mother was a whore (he had never even met me). I was talking to my son on the phone one day in school and the other young lad walking past him shouted it at him and I heard it clearly for myself. I spoke to the school and they said that they had spoken to the parents but didn't seem to be making any headway. A few weeks later we were at a school function and I saw the parents chatting to the principal and the bishop (both of whom I know very well) - too good an opportunity to miss. I wandered over and introduced myself and we were all idly chatting about various things when I said to the parents, "Actually, I'm delighted to get a chance to chat to you because I'm really concerned about (insert son's name here), he seems to be under the impression that I make my living on street corners. I know that working from home might seem a little confusing but obviously I can't really support him wandering round the school shouting to various people that I'm a whore (cue shocked and horrified looks from all). Would it help if I were to chat to him about it or perhaps you could bring him over so he could see how I really earn my crust?" They completely denied that their little darling would do/say any such thing so I said, "No, no, I have actually heard him myself when I was on the phone to my son. I'm just really worried for him because people will gain a lot of their impressions of him from what comes out of his mouth and I'm sure he's a lovely chap so I thought I would just mention it." The father looked very much like he wanted to punch me but there was nothing they could do/say in the company and I was being ultra reasonable and helpful. They were absolutely mortified. Don't really know what happened when they got home and don't particularly care but I do know that he stopped shouting hateful things at my son. It's one of those 'Go hard or go home' moments really if you decide to take it on!